The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria: Background and Outcomes By Naser Ahmadi A capstone project submitted for Graduation with University Honors June 1, 2020 University Honors University of California, Riverside APPROVED _______________________________________________ Dr. Augustine Kposowa Department of Sociology _______________________________________________ Dr. Richard Cardullo, Howard H Hays Jr. Chair, University Honors Abstract Everyday life in the Middle East is described by war and terror, from the Yamen’s Civil war to that one in Syria. Across the region, civil societies and communities are under the attacks of fanatical groups like the Islamic State (IS) and the Taliban, as well as the oppressive reactionary governments such as in Iran and Turkey, limiting political life to barbarianism and fascism. Even in western countries, neoliberal and representative democracy is failing to maintain a genuine political life by giving ways to the rise of right-wing political forces. Th current condition necessitates a new form of radical democratic politics. In the midst of this political disillusionment, the people of North and East Syria came together to form a new society based on direct democracy, ecology, and feminism under the principles of “Democratic Confederalism”. The movement in North and East Syria, known as “Rojava’s Revolution”, despite its shortcomings, has been successful in creating a new durable alternative through both reappropriating of vital social relationships and producing revolutionary subjectivities. This study sheds light on the historical background of the Syrian Kurds and their connections to the Kurds in Turkey. The study, also explores the formation of the Kurdish liberation movement in Syrian Kurdistan and its connections to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) movement in Turkish Kurdistan. It examines theoretical and practical dimensions of the movement and the incorporation of women as essential contribution to its success. Introduction In the early 20th century, out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire a new political order emerged in the Middle East (McDowall, 1996 a). That order paved a road to the colonization of this region by France and Britain, and eventually, to the rise of new nation states. Arbitrary border drawing by both European colonists and the newly- formed Turkish state divided Kurdistan (lands of the Kurds) between four nation sates: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. The process of nation building, accompanied with Arab, Turkish, and Persian nationalism, resulted in the denial of Kurdish identity. Kurdish ambitions and aspirations to self-rule, and political and cultural representation, regardless of its political framework, was considered as a threat to national security by the aforementioned states (Allsopp & Wilgenburg, 2019). Kurds, the largest stateless ethnic group in the world, have faced forced assimilation, genocide, and annihilation in their struggle to preserve their identity. In Iraq, during the Anfal (Spoils) military campaign, Kurds were subjected to chemical weapons, forced migration, and complete destruction of 300,000 of their villages (Human Rights Watch, 1993; McDowall, 1991b; Randal, 1998). In Syria, through the 1961 Hasaka census 120,000 Kurds, 20% of Syrian Kurds at that time (Human Rights Watch, 1996), were categorized as stateless (Fuccaro, 2003; McDowall, 1991b; Schmidinger, 2018). During the implementation of “Arab Belt” in the Jazira province in 1976, 60,000 Kurds were forced to leave their homes for Damascus, Turkey, and Lebanon (Human Rights Watch, 2009; McDowall, 1991 b). In Iran, following the revolution of 1979, Iran’s supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini described the Kurds as “infidels” and declared war against themi. Today’s Kurdish life in Iran can be described by execution, imprisonment, and scrutinization of communities (Soleimani & Mohammadpour, 2019). In Turkey, Kurds are faced with systematic discrimination and 1 institutionalized racism (Bisikci, 2015). Being denigrated as “Mountain Turks” by the Turkish government, Kurds were denied of their own identity and were to be the subject of genocide: In the Kurdish-majority province of Dermis 60,000 Kurds and some Armenians were massacred in 1936-37. A Turkish soldier who took part in the genocide wrote: Earlier today, we stormed the village of Yalan Dagi... We have brought tools with us and are waiting for orders to demolish the village… We… stopped by the shore of a river at 7 am. We… could not drink the river water because of the dead bodies that had contaminated it. We reached a village today. The soldiers looted homes…We could see the sheep and the dead bodies down the mountain. In the daytime, we are busy with beheadings… I no longer feel I am a human being.ii (Yousif K. Akim diary, 1938) Kurdish identity has been shaped and sharpened by Kurds’ historical resistance against colonial and oppressive attitude of central governments, and that is precisely what fuels the democratic- oriented landscape of different movements in Kurdistan, most notably the unfolding movement in North and East Syria, i.e., Rojava’s Revolution. Almost a century after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Syrian civil unrest in 2011 provided a unique opportunity for the forgotten Syrian Kurds to develop an egalitarian society based on radical and communal democracy, inspired by the notion of ‘Democratic Confederalism’, a term coined by the imprisoned Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan (Allsopp & Wilgenburg, 2019). Today’s civil war in Syria started as an inspiring social and political movement demanding equality, freedom, and social and economic justice. As President Bashar al-Assad, helped by the Iranian governmentiii, resisted and suppressed anti-government protests, also with the increased involvement of regional powers, the peaceful mobilization turned 2 into a militarized conflict forcing the movement not only to let go of its democratic characteristics but to adopt sectarian and Islamic agendas (Knapp, Flach, & Ayboga, 2016). Meanwhile, Kurdish movement led by Democratic Union Party (YPD) decided to implement third-way politics: It would side neither with the Syrian government nor with the opposition, i.e., defending Kurdish civil society and not to wage war. In July 2012, as the fight between the Syrian government and Free Syrian Army (FSA) intensified, Syrian government redeployed its forces from Northern Syria to the country’s Southern parts. The redeployment allowed PYD and its military wing-People’s Defense Units (YPG) to control most of the Kurdish territory. As People and Women’s Defense Units (YPG/J) safeguarded Rojava from various rebel groups, Movement for Democratic Society (TEV-DEM) started fostering a grass-roots communal based democracy leading to the declaration of independent Rojava with non-contiguous cantons of Jazira, Kobani, and Afrin (Schmidinger, 2018). However, the newly liberated territories-predominately Arab populated- from the Islamic State (ISIS) by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and the increased participation of other ethnic groups in the Autonomous Administration led to the creation of Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria in 2018, dropping the term ‘Rojava’ from the constitution (Rojava Information Center, 2020). How were people in the North and East Syria able to build a lasting “political utopia in ISIS’ backyard”iv? A short answer is: through Ocalan’s framework of ‘Democratic Confederalism’ and ‘Democratic Nation’, engendered by his personal intellectual endurance, as well as four decades of PKK’s resistance against Turkish colonial campaign in Turkish Kurdistanv. Democratic Confederalism is the result of Ocalan’s criticism of PKK’s abandoned paradigm of building a Kurdish nation state. According to Ocalan, nation state stands against diversity and consistently assimilates different identities in its effort to build a single national and cultural identity. Instead, 3 he offers an organic bottom up democracy based on feminism, and ecology. Ocalan argues that democratic confederalism can coexist within a state as long as the state does not interfere in the central matters of self-administration (Ocalan, 2011). The movement in North and East Syria, with all its shortcomings, has been successful in creating a new durable alternative through both reappropriating of vital social relationships and producing revolutionary subjectivities. Social spaces have been liberated from state’s scrutiny and turned into spaces where new possibilities arise. Patriarchal and hierarchical structures were replaced with horizontal feminist-oriented ones. This study explores the formation of the Kurdish liberation movement in Syrian Kurdistan and its connections to Kurdish struggle in Turkish Kurdistan. It examines theoretical and practical dimensions of the movement, and its feminist and ecological aspects. Syrian Kurdistan: A Historical Sketch on Demography, Geography, and Politics Prior to the conclusion of the First World War, France and Britain had agreed to strip most part of Anatolia and all Arab populated territories from Turkish control (McDowall, 1996; Vanly, C. 1992). The secretive Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916 was to give France and Britain the right of “direct or indirect administration” over the designated “Blue” and “Red” areas, respectively. Following the occupation of Damascus by the Allied troops in October 1918 (Vanly, 1992), Faysal I, from the Hashemites dynasty was forced by the European powers to negotiate an agreement with